


The Underflames Seemed To Brighten

by SecondStarfall (beantiger)



Series: The Second Starfall Stories [40]
Category: Original Work
Genre: 1800s-era Tech, Comfort, Cute, F/F, Fairy Tale Elements, Fairy Tale Style, Fantasy, Fate & Destiny, Flash Fic, LGBTQ Character, Lesbian Character, Magic, Microfic, Original Character(s), Originally Posted Elsewhere, Pre-Relationship, Princes & Princesses, Prophecy, Royalty, Stargazing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:02:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23418682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beantiger/pseuds/SecondStarfall
Summary: “You take care of me, so I take care of you, so I won’t let you become a wanted criminal, silly. Does that sound fair?”***A witch and a witch-heir catch strange fireflies that speak of the future.
Relationships: Original Character(s)/Original Character(s), Original Female Character/Original Female Character
Series: The Second Starfall Stories [40]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1582975
Kudos: 5





	The Underflames Seemed To Brighten

**Author's Note:**

> This is a version of the original Twitterfic, same title, posted over at my now-deactivated personal account in March 2020. It has been given minor edits for consistency with other stories and readability on AO3. ❤️
> 
>  **SUGGESTED RE-READING:** Another direct follow-up to ["The Bear's Last Princess,"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23375779) taking place just after.
> 
> ✨ [[see the full SecStar timeline](https://secondstarfall.com/index.php/Official_Timeline) | [check out the SecStar wiki](https://secondstarfall.com/)] ✨

“Why did you help Toor leave?” Kirra asked.

As the failed apprentice Taaron Miphariin watched the dusky sky, she thought: _Kirra knows my mind better than I do, and yet she still waits for me to say something first._

Said Taaron, “How did your mothers take Toor’s exit?”

“Oh. Er. They didn't.”

“Kirra…”

Soon night spread out like an airy sheet over the witch-heir Kirra Lattar and Taaron both. It was a summery kind-of dark, somehow both pale and radiant. At present the pair waited where a long, daisy-dotted meadow—the meadow in which they’d often talked and played—turned to dense and fuzzy woodland. They both sported sizeable nets. Jars lie at their feet. 

“I'll get to it, I'll get to it!” Kirra replied. “Don’t look at me like that! Keep your eyes on the sky! And you didn’t answer my question, silly. Even if I know what you’re going to say, and why you’ll say it.”

After a pause, Taaron said: “I guess Toor looked as bad as I feel.” 

"I—oh. You didn't feel something tugging on you? Something like the little voice in your head, but not?"

In the moment Taaron had held the circlet in her hands—the moment she'd decided to free Kirra's nanny—she felt in control of herself. Yes: _she_ had chosen to do that. Just her. Because it had pained her to see another being so out-of-place. And yet at the same time, in the back of her mind, it'd been as if an old auntie had given her advice that she cherished. She felt not influenced, but nudged in the right direction. The sensation had been so subtle, Taaron had hardly noticed until...

"I mean—er, yes. By something tugging—do you mean like the Old Law?" Taaron fiddled with her net. "You talk about it as if it's...alive."

"It is, silly, else it wouldn't do much good as a law. Every witch follows the Old Law. And it speaks very, very strongly through you. I can tell."

"But what if—"

“Hold that thought, dearest—here they come!”

Like sand pouring into the bottom of an hourglass, a swarm of underflames poured down into the meadow. On one hand, they looked to Taaron—who had expected something a little more impressive—like any firefly that one could catch at that time of year. She begun to swing her net wildly.

And yet, on the other...

Hundreds, thousands of insects, each no bigger than Taaron’s fingernail, each—what, glowing?—from their tail-ends. No, the opposite of glowing, of shining. Whatever that was. Emitting darkness? As if someone had torn a hole in the air and revealed the hard, shadowy spine of the world.

“What will you tell your uncle? About the circlet?” Kirra yelled, swooping her net around. She stumbled and tripped as—Taaron guessed—one of her dizzy spells likely overtook her.

Taaron replied, “The truth! And what will you tell your mothers about Toor?”

“The truth!”

Out of breath, Taaron fell backwards. As she jarred the docile underflames, she decided to hold one between her fingernails, examining it.

“Thief-witch. It will be decades before you return what you’ll have stolen,” it buzzed.

Then it flew away. Wordlessly Taaron jarred the rest of the little bugs. One of Kirra’s many sisters was a botanist and wanted a whole mess to feed them to her carnivorous plants, for whatever reason. It had, at the time, seemed like an exciting adventure to take on.

Later, when Taaron told Kirra what she had done, Kirra said: “Oh, but that doesn’t seem true, does it, dearest? They always look at me and go…” (Here she put on a commanding voice.) “...Kirra Lattar, bzz bzz, will perish in flames over the sea, bzz bzz. Does that sound like me?”

“I guess not.”

“Noooo. I just want to be a writer. And you—you're no thief, Taaron Miphariin! You gave Toor their freedom. Besides, the Law lives in you as much as they do in me. Maybe more.”

“That’s...unrelated. I stole my uncle’s circlet, remember.”

They lie in the grass, sprawled out, watching the stars. Their jars of darkness twinkled—un-twinkled—between their knees.

Said Kirra, “The Law wouldn't _let_ you do anything bad. But even if it did: you take care of me, so I take care of you, so I won’t let you become a wanted criminal, silly. Does that sound fair?”

Kirra wound a strand of Taaron’s hair around her finger. The underflames seemed to brighten, if for just a moment.

**Author's Note:**

> Please be sure to leave a comment or a kudos or bookmark the piece if you enjoyed it! ❤️
> 
> ✨ [[see the full SecStar timeline](https://secondstarfall.com/index.php/Official_Timeline) | [check out the SecStar wiki](https://secondstarfall.com/)] ✨
> 
>  **AUTHOR'S COMMENTARY:** I remember I used [the Story Engine](https://story-engine.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders) to conceptualize this one. Highly recommended.
> 
> Also, I know I joke about how dark things get later in Taaron and Kirra's lives, but I really do adore these two. I don't throw things at them because it's funny, but because I wanted to tell a story about bad luck and young love, just to clarify. (There is a good ending.) I hope I didn't come off like I got a weird pleasure out of kicking these poor girls!


End file.
